After months of speculations about Google punishing sites that sell links and discounting the value of paid text links for SEO purposes, Matt Cutts from Goolge revealed that they see paid links against their terms and conditions and quality guidelines. Here is a video from an interview Danny Sullivan did with Matt Cutts in SMX Advanced search engine optimization conference.

Video – Matt Cutts Comments on Buying Links

Shortly after, Google updated its PageRank data, apparantly with some adjustments to algorithm, and as a result many sites that were involved in buying and selling links have lost some PageRank.

This is another phase in Google’s war against those who try to get higher ranking by buying links to manipulate Google’s algorithm.

This is another reminder to all Search Engine Optimizers need to look at optimizing sites through organic and natural efforts. The short term gains might be achieved by trying to play search engines; however, if you are looking for long lasting high rankings, you would need to think outside the box and develop unique content that people love and link to.